10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference Meets in Malaysia

On October 18, 2003, Yahoo! News posted an Agence France Presse (AFP) article that reported, “The 57-member Organisation of the Islamic Conference’s two day summit at Malaysia’s administrative capital Putrajaya was the largest gathering of Muslim leaders since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The leaders — who represent 1.3 billion people — spoke of a Muslim world under siege due to the global focus on terrorism by Islamic extremists in the wake of the September 11 and other attacks such as last year’s Bali bombing. The OIC’s final communique strongly condemned terrorism, while making the point of including ‘state terrorism,’ a term usually used to refer to Israel’s crackdown on the Palestinians. Muslim leaders also rejected ‘selectivity and duplicity’ of standards in combating terrorism and attempts to associate terrorism with a particular religion or culture.”

10th Session of the Islamic Summit Conference Meets in Malaysia

On October 13, 2003 the BBC News ran a story on the Islamic Summit Conference in Malaysia, “the biggest gathering of Muslim nations in three years,” which said “the Islamic world faces ‘unprecedented’ dangers” in the current global situation: “[Abdelouahed Belkeziz, secretary-general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference] said the 11 September attacks on the United States two years ago had caused the world to forget Islam’s message of peace and tolerance and to focus instead on the violence perpetrated by extremists. He said that as a result, Islam itself was facing false accusations, while joint Islamic action was unable to secure the Muslim world’s protection and pride.”